We are in a world economic system that is not good. A system that in order to survive must make war, as great empires have always done. But since you cannot have a Third World War, you have regional wars. And what does this mean? That arms are made and sold, and in this way the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money, obviously keep their balance sheets in the black.
Matthew Shadle at Catholic Moral Theology explores the theories agreeing and disagreeing with this pithy statement of Francis’ made in an interview with the Spanish magazine La Vanguardia (Spanish original here).
As a confirmed consumer of marmalade sandwiches at breakfast-time I thought I ought to post this trailer for the film about a childhood icon with a similar predilection.
I must say he doesn’t look a thing like the illustrations I remember so fondly. Maybe it’s the missing duffel coat.
Maybe surprisingly, St Ignatius in his retreat manual, the Spiritual Exercises, doesn’t talk much about prayer. OK he talks endlessly about prayer but always as a variety of spiritual exercise. Spiritual exercise is his preferred category.
There is a prejudice that prayer, if you are doing it right, should be serene, peaceful, passive, restful even. That is often an issue for people coming on retreat for the first time: they expect that, if they can do it right, it will be quiet and easy. They might doubt that they can do it right but they expect they should.
St Ignatius sees prayer rather differently. He expects that if you do it ‘right’ it will be rather turbulent — a roller-coaster ride of alternating emotions as you find yourself passing between consolation and desolation and back again as you try to encounter God (or try to let yourself be encountered by God). In fact, he advises the retreat-giver faced with a continually serene retreatant to ask some questions to see whether the person is actually doing the exercises as set.
Ignatius can talk about ‘doing it right’ because he has a particular aim in mind for the spiritual workout he designs a retreat to be. It isn’t primarily about becoming proficient in any way of praying but about encountering God with honesty. He knows enough about human beings to expect that our encounter with God will stir up desires and resistances in us, we will be drawn by the good spirit and unsettled by the bad spirit, and handling all that will be strenuous. It will be work. It will be exercise. And we will learn and grow in the process.
Ignatius takes seriously the analogy between spiritual exercise and physical exercise. If you want results from exercise you approach it systematically, you do whatever is known to help, you maybe even find a personal trainer. He is very down-to-earth with his advice:
attend to your spiritual exercise regularly — just fitting it in here and there when you feel like it doesn’t much work
find a place, a time, a posture, for your spiritual exercise that seems to suit you and stay with it as long as it keeps working for you
don’t just stumble into your spiritual exercise– warm up! — think in advance of what you might be doing — if you are going to use a piece of scripture or some other material find it, read it, then put it on the back burner
if you have decided your spiritual exercise should last half an hour, say, stick to it — don’t duck out if it proves boring or extend the exercise if you are on a high
and after your spiritual exercise stretch and cool down — don’t compartmentalise your prayer, review the time and maybe make a note or two about what happened and what moved you so you can integrate the experience into the rest of your life
So if Ignatius sees a time of retreat as a workout what exactly is being exercised, trained, grown, stretched? Well, a familiarity with the God who is already familiar with us. A facility to engage imaginatively with that God. Maybe a falling in love with that God. An honesty about our experience so we see it as it is, not how we want it to be. A growing understanding of what brings us closer to God and what pulls us further away — what Ignatius calls the ability to discern spirits. Discerning spirits is, for Ignatius, all about making the choices to follow God in ordinary experience. His has been called a mysticism of choice. Spiritual exercise is aimed at training us to choose well, to seek and find God in all things, and choose to go where God goes.
I’ll write in Part II how the careful way Ignatius structures spiritual exercise to work toward these ends.
thonyc’s graphic of the Phases of Venus in rival systems
Another excellent ‘Rough Guide‘ to the state of historical research into astronomy in the early modern period, this time asking what the observation of the phases of Venus proved or didn’t prove about rival models of the Solar System. Clear and nicely complicated! Thank you Renaissance Mathematicus.
Gratitude is a pleasant state of mind in itself, rooted in the awareness of having been gifted, but it can also be a way of responding to God the Giver with thankfulness and generosity. Gratitude needs to be entertained though, dwelled with, so it becomes a habit of seeing and feeling and acting. And that takes practice — hopefully a pleasant practice.
What follows can be a ‘sit-down’ way of praying or a short response to experience as it occurs. The one feeds the other. It has its sources in Ignatius of Loyola’s Examen prayer, his Contemplatio ad Amorem and some of his ideas on storing up consolation. There are psychological resonances in Rick Hanson’s HEAL process which I talked about in an earlier post.
It is simple to explain as a response to experience as it takes place. We all react easily to negative experiences: they stir us up and stay with us. Spiritually, they make God harder to find and responding more difficult. We are just as often gifted with ‘positive’ experiences — I mean anything for which we feel grateful, however fleetingly, in the moment — from the birth of a child to the warmth of the sun on your face, from feeling part of a group to knowing you coped well with a conflict. Strangely, the positive experiences tend not to stick, we let them drift by, we don’t let them take root in us, we may even actively downplay their importance. We miss the grace and we miss an opportunity for a spiritual practice. Bad experiences can affect us in an instant but good experiences need a little time to sink in.
A practice of gratitude involves admitting such experiences when they happen, holding off any tendency to minimise them, but instead letting the experience grow, deepen, intensify. Instead of feeling a little enjoyment at the warmth of the sun, really let it take up the centre of your awareness for half a minute or more, revel in it, savour it, accept it, let it soak in. That in itself is gratitude — though words are important, we show gratitude best by whole-hearted enjoyment of the gift — but as the experience is savoured it can become the starting place for a conversation with God. How is God looking at you in your enjoyment? How does that change your feelings? How do you want to respond?
The whole thing might take a minute or two and you can even do it in the presence of others.
As a more ‘formal’ way of praying the practice has a lot in common with the Examen, or Examination of Consciousness — indeed it is usually listed as the second of the five steps in the Examen. Within the Examen exercise, however, the practice of gratitude is often rushed over as a prelude but it deserves and repays time in its own right.
For the space of ten or fifteen minutes (or maybe more) let your attention drift back over the experiences of the past day (or hour or whatever) and just notice any moments in which you felt gifted. These might be major or minor, they may be ones you were aware of at the time or ones that you only see now in hindsight. The aim is to follow your nose to one or two experiences of pleasure or joy or gift and to savour each in memory, letting the moment expand and deepen. Stay with it as long as it has ‘flavour’. Absorb it. Let it move you spontaneously to gratitude. Let your enjoyment of the experience be your gratitude to God. Perhaps ask yourself how God is looking at you as you remember and relive whatever it was. See what that stirs up in you and how you want to respond. If it feels right let a conversation develop with God — one friend to another, as Ignatius would say.
Sometimes you might find there is nothing really noticeable in your day. Don’t react badly to that realization: there are several things you can do. You could give yourself a little experience of pleasure or comfort, etc. by taking a drink of cool water, or tasting something good, or looking out the window, or … I can usually find a moment of calm and pleasure by filling and holding a hot water bottle! An alternative is to dip into deeper memories of gift. Today might have been lousy but there may be older memories that root you in a firmer truth. One that nearly always works for me is to place myself in one of the places that are sacred to me, places that are Holy Ground to me. Sometimes that will require more imagination then memory but that is fine.
The aim is to get your spirit into consolation, however briefly, because there you will meet the God who gives good things.
It is always good to end such an exercise in some ‘formal’ way, rather than just drifting out of it. Take your pick.
There are some things that are supposed to be sacrosanct on the internet: one of them is that URIs, web addresses to you and me, should never change once they have been allotted. Now, in reality, web addresses get deleted or modified all the time — but I don’t like to be the culprit. Despite that purism, I have just changed the name of one of my post categories. I think it changes the address of 2 or maybe 3 posts so the internet will survive!
Six or so years ago when I created a category for ‘theological’ reflections on chronic illness I called it ‘Theology of Fatigue’. Six years ago I remember not caring what anybody called my illness — CFS or ME made no difference to me. Now I am more sensitive! I have realised that whenever I say Chronic Fatigue Syndrome on the whole what people hear is the one word ‘fatigue’ — they think I am tired a lot and they measure that by their own experience of being tired. There are few things as alienating as being told ‘oh I know, I get tired too’. (Also read Toni Bernhard’s post ‘What Those with Chronic Pain or Illness DON’T Want to Hear‘.)
Well I am tired a lot but that misses the real experience of having ME. Fatigue is almost peripheral. Some days the cognitive problems of ‘brain fog’ are to the fore; some days it is dizziness; other times digestive symptoms, or allergies, or hypersensitivity to sound or light, or waking up as tired as the night before, or muscle and joint pain. Fatigue in itself isn’t the core problem, the ease with which fatigue happens is, and the effects of fatigue on all the other symptoms. The problem is called post-exertional malaise (PEM). I can walk slowly for 30 minutes. I can see a person for some spiritual direction for 50 minutes. I can visit my mother in the nursing home for 10 minutes. But if I walk for 35 minutes, or speed up a little bit, or if the spiritual direction goes on for 10 minutes extra or the visit another five, then there will be consequences. Post-exertional malaise might hit within the hour or it might wait a few hours — sometimes it happens a day or more later. It has two aspects: the malaise part of it feels (to me) like the fatigue and malaise of having flu with the malaise of jet-lag thrown in; the other aspect is that some or all the other symptoms flare up too. A sure sign I am ‘doing too much’ is when my hands or feet swell up with what my doctor called ‘idiopathic urticaria/angiooedema’. Large doses of antihistamines normally keep it at bay but when my symptoms flare it turns up again. And I don’t know whether the PEM will last an hour, a day, or a month.
That’s all to say ‘Theology of Fatigue’ as a category has gone and been replaced by ‘Theology of Chronic Illness’. All I need to do now is actually add some theology to the category!
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
If only it were that easy! If only our ability to choose were so straightforward! Since I have had ME I find that anxious and stressful thoughts — usually about one symptom or another — pounce on me suddenly like they were cat and me mouse. They leave me shaking and sweating and feeling sick. There isn’t a space between the thought and the physical response in which to choose not to respond. In fact, when I reflect on it, it seems that the first thing I know is the physiological change with the thought about whatever it is following in its wake. And once the adrenaline is pumping and I am thinking anxious thoughts the power to choose to be calm seems to have left me.
I have tried lots of therapies to change this pattern: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy aims to change illness beliefs but it didn’t help me in this area; various NLP-based pattern-interrupts are supposed to help but haven’t in my case; Eriksonian hypnotherapy helps to some degree, letting my unconscious mind ‘choose’ less stressing thoughts, but it isn’t a fast-acting solution for me. Mindfulness is supposed to help but when I am in the grip of the adrenaline response I find it hard to inhabit the observing space and let things be. I have had a modicum of relief in simply ‘externalizing’ the thought — telling someone that X is happening and I am worrying over it and what to do about it — if i can find someone who will listen and not make a fuss or make me feel stupid.
I guess all that shouldn’t surprise me — human beings are complex, weak creatures and sick ones even more so. Ignatian spirituality has been called a ‘mysticism of choice’ and Ignatius knew all about the complexity of choosing one’s thoughts. For him the issue was to do with discernment of spirits. Here is Ignatius’ ‘subtitle’ to his so-called Rules for discernment:
… to aid us toward perceiving and understanding, at least to some extent, the various motions which are caused in the soul: the good motions that they may be received, and the bad that they may be rejected (Exx 313).
‘Motions’ covers thoughts, feelings, desires, leanings, fantasies, etc. and Ignatius provides rules of thumb for sorting them out, ‘good’ from ‘bad’, so that the first can be ‘received’ and the second ‘rejected’. Quite similar in a way to William James sentiment but the context is more nuanced. Ignatius’ rules are embedded in the experience Spiritual Exercises, a month-long imaginative pedagogy of choice and desire. Receiving and rejecting takes some training!
One insight from Ignatius I find helpful is that following the ‘good spirit’ is more helpful than resisting the ‘bad’. All the focus on pattern breaking is — at least in my case — giving extra air time to the ‘bad spirit’. Far more helpful is to engage the ‘good spirit’. I recently discovered a psychological approach that has something in common with this aspect of Ignatius teaching.
What Ignatius describes as ‘storing up consolation’ Hanson presents as three steps HAVE, ENRICH, ABSORB:
1. HAVE – Notice any quality of being for yourself already present in the foreground or background of awareness. Perhaps you can sense or feel a determination to take care of your own needs, or good wishes for yourself. Or, create this feeling. Bring to mind a time when you were strong on your own behalf, when you self-advocated or were kind to yourself. If it’s hard to get on your own side, start by remembering the experience of being for someone else. Feel what this is like, and then see if you can bring the same attitude to yourself. Perhaps get an image or memory of yourself as a young, vulnerable child and see if you can feel supportive toward that young person.
2. ENRICH – Open to this feeling. Let it fill your body and mind and become more intense. Stay with it, help it last, make a sanctuary for it in your mind. Notice different aspects of the experience. Imagine how you would sit or stand or speak of you were on your own side, and then let your posture or facial expression shift in this direction. Be aware of how being on your own side would matter for you at home or work.
3. ABSORB – Sense and intend that this feeling of being on your own side is sinking into you as you sink into it. Let this good experience become a part of you. Give yourself over to it. Let being kind toward yourself, wishing yourself well, be increasingly how you treat yourself.
It sounds very simple — and it is. Make the most of ‘good’ experiences when they happen, amplify them and dwell with them long enough for them to affect the brain’s chemistry, store them up. And even when such an experience is not present you can evoke a memory or even imagine one and store that up too.
I find that even when ‘nothing’ else good is going on I can enjoy the simple experience of holding a hot water bottle: the warmth is comforting and when I focus on it it expands and I notice the way it relaxes muscle and soothes pain and takes up the focus of my attention in a lovely way. If I dwell further I can feel it connect with other richer experiences too.
And more, even when the adrenaline has pounced on me and I am feeling scared and wrung out, shaken and shivery, when I get a moment’s freedom I can recall the hot water bottle — or better fill a real one — and, instead of fighting the adrenaline or trying hard to choose not to think disturbing thoughts, I can accept and receive something good and healing. And maybe take a step to rewiring my brain.
Richard Beck of Experimental Theology reports the research findings on how we react to insults. Specifically, he and his co-workers ask if the propensity to notice and feel insulted is more an emotional issue (we get angry easily or we are easily slip into negative emotions) or an ego issue (we think we have more to lose).
Summarizing, our research attempted to test two rival models concerning insult sensitivity. Is insult sensitivity an emotional regulation issue? Or is insult sensitivity related to protecting the ego and its feelings of superiority?
Our research found no significant associations between insult sensitivity ratings and the emotion measures (anger proneness and neuroticism). However, insult sensitivity was associated with narcissism. Specifically, the larger the ego the greater the sensitivity to insult.
It seems that insult is more about ego than emotion.
It leads him into some interesting reflections on the mental-health benefits of humility but it reminded me of Ignatius’ view of humility in the Two Standards consideration in the Exercises. There he uncovers the way Christ and the Enemy of our human nature work in the world by two very different strategies. Listen to him describe the strategy of Lucifer’s agents who…
have first to tempt with a longing for riches—as he is accustomed to do in most cases—that men may more easily come to vain honour of the world, and then to vast pride. So that the first step shall be that of riches; the second, that of honour; the third, that of pride; and from these three steps he draws on to all the other vices.
The way of Christ is rather different:
consider the discourse which Christ our Lord makes to all His servants and friends whom He sends on this expedition, recommending them to want to help all, by bringing them first to the highest spiritual poverty, and—if His Divine Majesty would be served and would want to choose them—no less to actual poverty; the second is to be of contumely and contempt; because from these two things humility follows. So that there are to be three steps; the first, poverty against riches; the second, contumely or contempt against worldly honour; the third, humility against pride. And from these three steps let them induce to all the other virtues.
Ownership -> status -> ego & pride rather than poverty -> insults & humiliations -> humility. Clearly Ignatius would have guessed Beck’s correlation. He goes further, though, placing ego at the root of all the other vices and humility at the source of all the virtues. It as as if pride or ego is the essential, infernal twist in the heart that brings its ruin (and vast social consequences too) while humility, kept topped up by insults and humiliations, un-kinks us.
When that dynamic is misunderstood you have a recipe for abuse. If insults and humiliations are good for you then why don’t I help you out with some more! If insults and humiliations are good for me then why don’t I seek them out? The subtlety of the parable Ignatius presents is in its presentation rather than its summary. Lucifer bullies, threatens, puts on a firework display but the Christ is the humble Jesus of the Sermon of the Mount encouraging, drawing, in a gentle and unassuming way. The insults and humiliations that Ignatius commends don’t come from Christ but come about becasue we are drawn to Christ and stand by him. And though we might be urged to pray for such insults and humiliations there are no grounds here for being attracted to them — it is Jesus that we are attracted to, and his way of life… the humiliation comes free.
I have an ambiguous relationship with mindfulness. It is recommended for so many purposes and I have myself taught Anthony De Mello’s version of mindfulness exercises but I have never got far with it as a personal practice. I didn’t when it was offered me as a way of preparing for prayer (I always found I got on better just diving in or entering via Ignatian imagination) and now that my attention span is diminished by disease I find it even less inviting. Yet I do find myself wondering if I am missing something. Friends give me testimonials about how it helps their chronic pain for example. It seems it ought to be ideally suited to coping with what I have called the ‘adrenaline poisoning’ that makes living with ME disturbing.
Mindfulness is in the headlines. Time recently devoted a cover story to the subject. The essence of mindfulness is paying careful attention to your present experience, whether it be a sight, a sound, a taste, a smell, a sensation in the body, or mental activity (such as an emotion or thought).
It is well worth a read and makes me want to give mindfulness some more thought and maybe even some more practice.
Toni, who also suffers from ME, wrote the book on the subject, ‘How to be Sick: A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers‘! I can highly recommend it even if I feel as ambivalent about it as I do about mindfulness. My ex-therapist thought it was the best thing since sliced bread but it got my theological hackles raised over the understanding of suffering.
‘Contemplative attitude’ on the other hand is something that I cherish and encourage — and it feels both like and unlike mindfulness. What is it? I learned it first in the context of spiritual direction. It is the focused, unmanipulative, attentive, open, listening to a person’s experience — or from the inside, my own attention to my experience. It is wanting to see what is really there, wanting to let the experience be on its own terms long enough for it to unfold and develop, wanting not to close it down prematurely by judging it or theorising about it. Walter Burghardt, SJ calls it ‘a long loving look at the real’. Perhaps the biggest difference from a mindful attitude is the expectation that the real looks back at me — that ordinary experience paid attention to contemplatively can be a place of encounter.
My favourite paragraph in the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola is [75]:
A step or two in front of the place where I am to contemplate or meditate, I will stand for the length of an Our Father, raising my mind above and considering how God our Lord is looking at me, etc., and make an act of reverence or humility.…
This is how Ignatius recommends we begin every spiritual exercise, with a look at God who is already looking at me. I have written before about how this is the key to Ignatian spirituality. Taken seriously, it means that every act of mindfulness takes place against the background of a God already being mindful of me. And that encompassing mindfulness makes a space where I can allow everything and anything to come to awareness.
Maybe that is my beef with mindfulness… it seems to me a lonely technique, an individual practice to manage my mind or brain, when what I am expecting from contemplative awareness is a dialogue, a relationship, an encounter.
